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Title: Chinook, the Cinnamon Cub
Author: Chaffee, Allen
Language: English
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[Illustration: “Now swim!” commanded their mother.]
CHINOOK
THE CINNAMON CUB
BY
ALLEN CHAFFEE
Author of “SITKA, The Snow Baby,” “FUZZY WUZZ,
The Little Brown Bear,” “TWINKLY EYES,
The Little Black Bear,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
PETER DA RU
MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Copyright, 1924
By MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
Springfield, Massachusetts
All Rights Reserved
Bradley Quality Books
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOREWORD
Here are stories of the wild life of the rich woods of
Oregon.
In following the adventures of Chinook, the cinnamon bear
and his sister Snookie (western prototypes of the jolly
black bears of New England), and of the Ranger’s Boy, the
child will learn of tree mice and burrow mice, and of the
little mountain pack-rats who build tepees, of those giant
mousers, the bobcat and the California mountain lion, to say
nothing of the bat, pika, elk, and “snowshoe rabbit,” and
the ever present Douglas squirrel.
He will wander through forests of spruce and fir to the
snow-clad peaks, and back along cascading rivers, as the two
cubs learn of the world in which they live.
The Literary Review of the New York _Evening Post_ has said
of a black bear book: “The little bear will delight all
children just because he is a ball of mischief, sagacity,
awkwardness—a real bear. Allen Chaffee’s books are unusual
for vivacity, humor, and truth to the characters of the no
longer dumb beasts.”
The Publishers.
CONTENTS
I A Boy and a Bear
II The Cubs Learn to Swim
III The California Lion
IV The Home in the Squirrel’s Nest
V Mr. and Mrs. Tree Mouse
VI Mazama the Mysterious
VII Lost in the Fog
VIII Team Work
IX Rat Town
X A Live Snowball
XI The Indian Trapper
XII In the Raven’s Nest
XIII Chinook Plays the Clown
XIV A Mouse on Wings
XV The Smuggler
XVI Douglas Squirrel Has Company
XVII Wapiti
XVIII A Cougar Goes Coasting
XIX Mountain Beaver
XX The Big ’Quake
CHINOOK THE CINNAMON CUB
CHAPTER I
A BOY AND A BEAR
The golden dawn of a June day in the Oregon woods streamed in slant bars
between the tall trunks of the yellow pines, and into the rocky gulch
where Mother Brown Bear had her den.
Dewdrops gleamed like diamonds on every flower and fern and spider web
that bordered the cascading creek. Mrs. Tree Mouse peered with bright,
beady eyes as a small, roguish face peeked from the cave mouth. Then out
into the warming sunshine burst two of the most roly-poly little brown
bears that she had ever seen. For a few minutes they wrestled like two
boys, standing up on their short hind legs to pummel one another, or
galloping about in a game of tag. Their small, flat feet made prints in
the soft earth for all the world like the prints of a human child’s
foot, and their black eyes twinkled with fun. It was Chinook and his
sister Snookie, their soft fur gleaming cinnamon-brown in the sunshine.
Then the huge form of Mother Brown Bear came lumbering through the cave
mouth, and with a soft rumble deep down in her chest she bade them
follow her. She made her way lumberingly down over the crags and fallen
logs to a stump where she might breakfast on a great cluster of yellow
mushrooms. The cubs had had their milk in the cave, but they always
wanted to sample everything their mother ate, and they went scrambling
after her as fast as their short legs and fat sides would let them.
The canyon in which they had been born that spring was a wild mass of
tumbled rocks and mossy boulders where, years before, a landslide or an
earthquake might have tossed them. Just below their cave lay a tangle of
fallen tree trunks piled crisscross, and overgrown with a jungle of the
mammoth ferns that throve in that moist soil. Just now these logs were
encrusted with the brilliant-hued mushrooms that Mother Brown Bear
loved. Later there would be blueberries and wild blackberries where now
pale blossoms shone in the sunlight. In the stream to which their
cascading streamlet led were trout, and in the great river beyond were
salmon who came from the sea to lay their eggs in the gravel. On the
mountainsides about them, where the wind-swept junipers twisted like
gnomes above the rocky ledges, lived burrow mice and wood rats who would
furnish good sport when the berries failed. It was a splendid bit of
wilderness on which Mother Brown Bear had staked out her claim, and the
cubs were eager to be taken exploring.
They had nearly reached a point where the huge fallen trunks, propped
breast high to a man on their broken branches, threw long black shadows
along the ground in which the cubs could hide in case of danger, when
Mother Brown Bear sounded a note of warning deep down in her throat.
Someone was coming along the trail. With the fur bristling along the
back of her neck, she rose to her hind legs and listened, wriggling her
nose this way and that to detect what manner of creature it could be. He
was certainly a noisy animal, for the fallen branches cracked under his
feet. That meant that he was without fear. He must be large and
ferocious. But the wind blew in the wrong direction to carry the message
to her nose.
Chinook also rose to his hind legs ready to fight, and he too peered
this way and that, sniffing and cocking his ears in his effort to see
what it was. Snookie, though she reared up in a pose that looked like
fight, preferred to take her stand behind her mother, and while Chinook
genuinely hoped there would be a good scrap, Snookie privately wished
there wouldn’t. For Snookie was the smaller cub, and in her bouts with
her brother she always seemed to get the worst of it.
“Whoof! Who is it?” asked Mother Brown Bear under her breath. “_Whoof!_”
echoed her small son aggressively, and “Whoof!” said Snookie in a wee,
small voice.
Then along the trail came someone attired in blue overalls and a wide
straw hat, who walked on his hind legs like a bear and carried a fishy
smelling rod over his shoulder. It was the Ranger’s Boy, who meant to
surprise his mother with a string of trout for breakfast.
“Grr!” warned Mother Brown Bear. “Don’t come any nearer, or I’ll do
something dreadful to you.” For she was always afraid that harm would
come to her wee, fuzzy children. The Ranger was in charge of these
woods, and he and the man cub had never harmed her, though of course,
she told herself, she was large enough to have fought off a whole family
of rangers. But with her babies it was different. They had come into the
world soft and helpless, and it would still be many moons before they
could look out for themselves. “G-r-r!” she warned the Boy again. But he
had stopped in his tracks to stare at them.
With Chinook it was far different. He felt so fine and fit that he just
itched for a fight with someone beside Snookie, and he growled a “Come
on!” deep down in his furry chest.
“Hello, there!” exclaimed the Boy softly from the far side of the
windfall, his eyes laughing as he saw the two new little bears standing
there ready for fight. He knew better than to come any nearer their
mother, but he also knew there was no need to run away, so long as he
kept his distance. “You’re a funny rascal,” he told Chinook. “A regular
scrapper, aren’t you? I wouldn’t mind making friends with you some day,”
and his voice was reassuring. Chinook understood the Boy’s tone, and his
quiet attitude, better than the words.
“I’ll fight you any time,” growled Chinook, and he struck an even
saucier pose, his little black eyes twinkling roguishly.
CHAPTER II
THE CUBS LEARN TO SWIM
“G-r-r! Better go on!” warned Mother Brown Bear, and at that, the
Ranger’s Boy thought best to march down the trail. But some day, he
promised himself, he was going to see more of that bear cub. As for
Chinook, he was consumed with a great curiosity to know more of the man
cub who walked on his hind legs all the way.
What an interesting world it was that lay all about him! First there had
been the sour-tasting ants and buttery grubs that his mother was always
finding under the fallen logs and boulders. Then there was Douglas, the
red-brown squirrel he could never catch, but who was always running
right across his trail till it seemed the easiest thing in the world to
nab him, only that some way Douglas always managed to leap beyond reach
just in the nick of time. Douglas claimed that the woods belonged to him
and that the bears were trespassing on his domain, and from the safety
of some limb too small for a bear cub, he would hurl jeers and insulting
challenges at Chinook.
“That’s because he’s afraid of us,” Mother Brown Bear told her son.
“Douglas is bluffing. He knows that bears are fond of having squirrel
for supper.”
For a while after the Boy had passed out of sight, the cubs were allowed
to practise walking on the fallen logs. When they fell off, they were so
fat and so round, and the moist ground so soft, that it did not hurt
them. Besides, the moment they felt themselves slipping, they could put
out their claws and cling to the rough bark. By and by the Boy returned
along the way he had come, but by this time Mother Brown Bear had led
the cubs far up the gulch to where a spot of sunshine invited a cat nap.
Even as she dozed, she kept one eye half open, and one ear cocked for
the slightest sound beyond the calling of nestling birds and the barking
and scrambling of noisy Douglas and his family, and the tinkling of the
wee cascades that led to the river. The cubs rolled and tumbled over
her, or coasted off her huge back, boxed and wrestled and played hide
and seek, or came up to pat her huge, furry face with little love pats.
It was a warm day, and when she had had her nap and the cubs their milk,
and a nap of their own, and the sun threw her shadow directly beneath
her, she decided that it would be a good time to teach them to swim. For
woods babies were likely any time to fall into the water, and if there
were any possible way of getting into trouble, Chinook, especially, was
sure to find it.
“Come!” she bade them with an affectionate soft rumble deep in her
throat, and she led the way down to the little river and on to where it
spread out shallowly over gravelly banks and the sun took some of the
chill out of the water. Mother Brown Bear waded in slowly. Chinook tried
first one fore paw, then the other, in this strange new element that was
not air, though one could see straight through it to the pebbly ground
beneath. Snookie backed off, whimpering. “Come on!” commanded Mother
Brown Bear. “Follow me.”
Chinook, less fearful than his sister, but still wary, because of the
coldness and the strange wetness of it, followed for a few steps, then
ran splashing back to shore, where he stood shaking first one foot, then
another with a shower of sparkling drops.
“Snookie, come here!” ordered Mother Brown Bear. But Snookie only
whimpered. “Chinook, show your sister that you are not afraid,” she
coaxed, and Chinook, with a show of bravado, waded in. But the instant
the water was deep enough to start lifting him off his feet, he turned
in a panic and again dashed madly back to solid ground.
“Snookie!” called Mother Brown Bear, wading back to shore, “climb on my
back.” This the smaller cub willingly did. She liked to ride on Mother’s
back, hanging on to the long fur with her handlike paws. “Come,
Chinook!” and Mother Brown Bear waded back into the river with both
youngsters gleefully taking a ride. As she went in deeper, Snookie
looked back at the receding shore line, and clung faster to her mother’s
fur. Still deeper went their chariot, till at last it reached deep
water. “Now swim!” commanded their mother, and with a suddenness that
unseated them, she made a dive and shook them from her back, then turned
and paddled to shore without once heeding Snookie’s strangling squeal
for help.
The cubs naturally struggled wildly to find a footing, and as they pawed
and clawed about, their legs worked the same way as when they ran, which
was just the way they ought to have worked. Then they discovered that by
spreading their legs even wider and scooping at the water with their
paws, they could do better still. Their vigorous paddling not only
served to keep their noses above water, but Chinook, less frightened
than his twin, turned his eyes to where his mother stood waiting on the
river bank, and struck out towards her with all his might. Snookie,
seeing his wee stub of a tail near her jaws, grabbed hold and let him
tow her, and soon they had their feet once more on the gravelly shore.
Puffing and panting, and dripping chilly drops, the cubs would have
rested, but that Mother Brown Bear set off on a gallop into the woods.
“Wait for me!” squealed Snookie.
“Wait!” panted Chinook, and the cubs galloped after her, Why was Mother
so unkind today?
CHAPTER III
THE CALIFORNIA LION
Mother Brown Bear had a reason for running away and making the cubs
follow, for by the time she was willing to stop, their shivering bodies
were all in a glow of warmth, and what with a few good shakings of her
wet fur, and a little help from their mother’s rough tongue, and the
sunny June breeze, they were soon dry and fluffy, and ready for
anything.
The next day Mother Brown Bear again took them swimming, and they found
they liked it. The day after, she decided to go fishing, for the streams
were full of trout, and she loved trout even better than the roots and
mushrooms that she could find near home. This time she towed the cubs
across the river. Chinook took her stub of a tail in his teeth to help
him as he swam, and Snookie took his tail.
When they had reached the riffles where the fishing was good, Mother
Brown Bear simply stood there like a floating log with one barbed paw
held under water, ready to spear any fish that swam too near. With her
sharp claws she could impale the slippery fellows, and toss them to
shore, where the cubs sat watching. They still drank milk, but with
their sharp little teeth they sampled everything their mother ate, to
see what it was like. They were having great fun this afternoon. In the
clear water they could see the shining bodies of the finny ones darting
along, and taking Mother Brown Bear for just a big brown log. Then she
would send a fish flapping to shore, and the cubs would try to catch the
slippery fellow.
The three bears had started late that day, and it was getting on towards
sunset. The high peaks to the westward had already cut off the ruddy
globe of light and left deep shadows creeping upon them, when Mother
Brown Bear, crunching her fish on the river bank, caught a strange
message on the wind that swept downstream. Her nose began to wriggle.
“What is it?” questioned Chinook softly through his nose.
“Hush!” breathed Mother Brown Bear, and the fur rose along her spine, as
her nerves tensed with anger. The cubs, feeling her mood, crept closer,
the fur rising frightened along their tiny spines.
Away down along the river bank a moving gray-brown shadow stirred the
salmon-berry bushes and made a faint lapping sound as it drank at a
pool. As the night wind blew to their inquiring nostrils, it telegraphed
that here was a huge foe. It told Mother Brown Bear distinctly that down
there, fishing, was Cougar, the California mountain lion, most dreaded
of all her enemies. She might have stood him off in single combat, had
he ever been so rash as to attack a grown bear, but here were the cubs,
so little and helpless! The only reason Cougar would ever have for
coming near would be if he wanted bear cub for breakfast. Many moons
ago, while exploring a distant mountain range, she had seen him lying in
wait for rabbits, and when she located her den in the gulch, she had
supposed that he still lived many miles from the spot. But here he was,
as she could see by peering from behind a boulder, crouched on the
shelving bank of the river with one paw dangling, barbed and ready to
spear a fish. Perhaps it had been a poor rabbit year and he had moved
into her territory. That would never do! From now on, she must keep
close watch of the cubs. Perhaps he need never learn that she had these
furry children to protect. If they went quietly now downstream, with the
wind blowing from him to them, they might cross the river lower down.
Then if he should cross their trail, he would lose their scent at the
point where they entered the water. But once let the giant cat learn of
the den by the cascades, and he would be watching it, like a cat at a
mouse hole, for the first moment when she had to leave her children
unprotected.
Now a bear, for all his weight, can pad along as softly as any other
mouser when he wants to, and this time, at least, the little family got
safely home without discovery. But when the great, tawny-brown cat had
caught his supper and eaten it, he decided to see what might be farther
downstream, and thus he happened upon the bear-scented footprints that
the three had left behind them.
“Ah, ha!” sniffed Cougar, who was longer than a man is tall. “Juicy,
tender young bear cubs! Just wait till I can catch one! What a feast it
will be!” and he licked his whiskered lips in pleased anticipation.
But when he came to the point where the bears had crossed the river, he
lost their trail, and though he sniffed about for a long time, he could
not find what had become of them. Cats hate getting wet, and he wouldn’t
have swum the river except in a real emergency.
Now it happened that the Ranger was after that very mountain lion, for
Cougar had been killing elk and deer, and these were Uncle Sam’s woods,
where deer are protected except for a little while each fall. But when
Cougar had moved from his old den on the other side of the mountain, the
Ranger had lost track of him.
One day, though, the Ranger’s Boy, on his way over the Pass with a
pack-horse to the Logging Camp where they bought flour and coffee, heard
something that sounded almost like a man sawing wood. It was away off up
the mountainside. The Boy listened, and if his mother hadn’t expected
him back by supper time, he would have climbed the slope to see who it
could be. If he had done so, he wouldn’t have caught so much as a
glimpse of the purring lion, who would have run at the first whiff of a
human being. But if the Boy had had his father’s pocket telescope with
him, he would have seen, stretched out flat on a shelving rock ledge,
which his fur almost matched, the long, slender, pantherlike animal, as
heavy as a grown man, with his small head nodding drowsily in the
sunshine because he had been up all night exploring. And in his dreams
Cougar licked his lips, for he was dreaming of nosing out the den where
Mother Brown Bear had her cubs.
CHAPTER IV
THE HOME IN THE SQUIRREL’S NEST
Douglas, the squirrel, whose fur just matched the red-brown tree trunks,
was as saucy as his eastern cousins, the red squirrels. He had been
named after a famous explorer, just as Chinook was named for the Indians
who lived in that part of Oregon.
It used to seem to the little bear as if the squirrel took delight in
teasing him, while so surely as Chinook tried to slip away and hide from
his mother, Douglas was sure to spy out his hiding place from some
branch overhead, and chatter and scream about it for all the woods to
hear. Then with a “catch-me-if-you-can” sort of challenge, he would go
whisking almost under the cub’s nose, and away. Chinook would go racing
after him, for he, as well as Douglas, could climb trees as easily as a
cat. His sharp claws clung to the bark even better than Mother Brown
Bear’s. But always the squirrel was too quick for him. Then when the
little bear would give it up and back his way to the ground, Douglas
would come and perch on a limb just out of reach, and hurl saucy threats
at him, or race up and down and around the tree trunk, his tail jerking
with his wrath. “These are _my_ woods,” he was always asserting. “My
pine cones! My mushrooms! Go away!” At which Chinook would retort: “I’ll
eat you alive, if you don’t look out!”
Then Douglas would seat himself away out on some slender branch where
Chinook could not have reached him, had he tried, and taking a pine cone
up in his handlike paws, he would nibble it around and around, and eat
the delicious kernels, while the little bear’s mouth watered for a
taste, then throw the empty cone down on his head.
The day after their fishing trip, Mother Brown Bear decided that if
Cougar was anywhere about, they had better stay at home, where in an
emergency she could order the cubs into the den and stand guard over
them. Chinook, having nothing better to do, therefore decided to catch
Douglas if it were possible for him to do so.
Away up in the yellow pine above the den was a great mass of sticks and
moss and dried pine needles that looked as if it might be Douglas’ nest.
In fact, he had often seen the squirrel run into that very tree. He did
not know that Douglas and his family had just built a larger nest in a
taller tree, for a bear’s little eyes are not so good as his nose for
telling what is going on about him. Today, sure enough, Douglas ran up
the trunk of the yellow pine with his cheeks stuffed full of mushroom
that he meant to put away for a rainy day. Chinook scrambled after him.
But Douglas, instead of going to the nest, only leapt to the limb of the
neighboring spruce, and from it to a tree beyond. Chinook determined, so
long as he was up there, to have a look at the nest.
Now it happened that Mrs. Rufus Tree Mouse had moved into the nest that
Douglas had abandoned. The little red mouse peered with frightened eyes
at the advancing cub, then with a soft “hush!” to her babies, she
cuddled them up in a warm ball away inside in the innermost chamber of
her new house, and waited, trembling, to see what the cub would do.
Chinook, finding the nest apparently deserted, though alluring, mousy
odors clung to it, decided to curl up in the crotch of a limb where he
could see if Douglas came back, and so comfortably was he lodged in the
hammocking crevice, and so drowsy did the stillness of the noonday
warmth make him feel, that the first thing Mrs. Rufus knew, the little
bear was fast asleep, right there, as it were, in her front yard.
“Dear me,” she whispered to Father Tree Mouse, when he came home with a
mouthful of soft lichen for the nursery walls. “Here is that bear cub,
right where he can see us if we so much as peek from the door, and there
is nothing to prevent his tearing the nest to pieces and eating us all
alive.”
“I haven’t forgotten how to run,” soothed Father Tree Mouse.
“Nor I. But what about the babies? We could only take two of them with
us. We’d have to leave two behind.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” explained Father Tree Mouse, “Don’t worry!
The minute that monster wakes, I’ll run out along that lower limb in
plain sight, and he’ll be so eager to catch me that he’ll never look
your way.”
“All right, then you keep watch while I feed the babies and get them to
sleep. If they keep squealing this way, they’ll wake him, sure,” and the
little red mouse began nursing her mouselets as a cat does her kittens.
She was thinking, what a shame to have to move, just as they had lined
walls and floor so daintily. The squirrel family had laid a good, firm
foundation of sticks too large for a mouse to handle, and the roof was
as tight and dry as new by the time they had plastered it. From their
post away up among the high interlacing branches, they could run from
one tree to the next and need never go down to the ground at all if they
didn’t want to, for they could find all the pine twig bark and—on the
tree next door, all the nice, green spruce needles that they could eat.
Father Tree Mouse had been sleeping in a little shack of his own, out on
the end of the branch, ever since the babies had come, from there he
could see all that went on around them, and put his mate on her guard by
sounding a signal squeak.
Chinook stirred in his sleep, and the little mother trembled. Would
Father Tree Mouse be able to do as he had planned when that monstrous
cub awoke?
CHAPTER V
MR. AND MRS. TREE MOUSE
Now as anyone understands who knows much about meadow mice, they nest on
the ground, and they are the one kind of game a bear can always count on
when the roots and berries are all gone and the trout streams frozen.
Once upon a time, ever and ever so many thousands of years ago, there
was a mouse who was wiser than the rest. When bears and bobcats pursued
her, she took refuge in the tree tops. One night it seemed as if every
creature in the woods was after her, and when she had reached the snug
crotch of a high limb where she could hide from them, she decided it was
wiser to stay there all night. The next morning for breakfast she
sampled the bark, and to her surprise, found the flavor first rate. Then
she began to ask herself why she need ever come down at all. She trilled
for her mate, for she had a sweet little birdlike voice when she sang,
and they discussed the situation. They had just been thinking of
building a nest where the babies would be safe when they came, and they
finally decided to build it away up high in the tree.
Those babies, after having grown up in the tree top, saw no reason why
they should go back to the ground either, and they too built homes in
the tree tops, so high that bears and bobcats never thought of looking
for them there. Where before they had eaten grass and other things that
they could find on the ground, now they nibbled bark and spruce fans,
and the tender butt ends of the pine needles. That way the whole tribe
came to live in trees. Their relatives who had stayed on the ground all
got caught, and there were only the families of those who had become
arboreal. Now their neighbors were birds and squirrels, and when they
wanted to go exploring, they could run out along one branch till it
crossed the branch of another tree. In time Mother Nature changed their
little furry coats from the gray-brown of the soil to the red-brown of
the Oregon tree trunks, so that their enemies could not see them when
they crouched along the limbs. She changed their teeth to stronger ones
that could gnaw the bark more easily, and she gave them the kind of eyes
that can see in the dark, because when the pretty little fellows went to
feeding among the greenery, their rufous coats showed up too plainly by
daylight. Finally, their Great Mother found that they needed longer
tails than they had on the ground to help them keep their balance when
they had to leap from branch to branch. And after Mother Nature had done
all that for them, they found that they were so safe that they could
build great, roomy nests in the very tree tops where they could raise
their children. Sometimes they found an abandoned squirrel’s nest that
made a first rate framework, and converted it into a palace of many
rooms. These they carpeted beautifully with cedar fans and bits of dry
moss and lichen for the babies to creep around on. The young bachelor
mice were generally satisfied with one-room cabins away out on the tips
of the limbs where they could come and go as they pleased, but as the
young people became more experienced in nest building, and as they found
that they needed larger quarters, they would often build a whole colony
of nests around some tree trunk, with the different apartments resting
on different branches, but with one main hallway that ran around the
trunk so that they could visit back and forth without going out of
doors. As the dust blew over these nests of sticks and spruce fans, and
the rain moistened the dust, and the seeds of tiny plants blew on this
rich soil, the apartment house would come to look like a bit of the
ground beneath, and on cold nights the thick walls would keep out the
rain and the wind and make it all as snug and homelike as anything you
can imagine.
That is how Mr. and Mrs. Tree Mouse came to be living so high above the
ground, in the branches of this great pine tree. They really preferred
spruce, because the bark has a better flavor, and, too, because most of
their friends lived in the spruce trees; but when Douglas, the squirrel,
had abandoned this great, roomy nest, it had seemed like too good a
bargain to let go, and they had promptly moved in.
They were really awfully frightened when they saw Chinook come
scrambling so near, for they had heard him tell Douglas how he would eat
him alive if he ever caught him. The pretty little red mother mouse had
just gotten her four babies asleep when Chinook finished his nap, and
with a yawn and a stretch, began looking about him to see where he was.
Now was the time for Father Tree Mouse to distract his attention, for
any moment, the cub might start investigating the nest. With a
high-pitched little squeak, the brave mite started to run along the limb
just below, but he scuttled so fast that Chinook decided it was no use
trying to catch him, and just sat there blinking sleepily in the
sunshine. At that, Father Tree Mouse came back, and this time he
pretended to have a broken leg, which made him limp along so slowly that
even Chinook might have caught him. Just barely out of reach of the
little bear’s barbed paw, Father Tree Mouse limped down the tree trunk
and out along the limb. This time the cub ran after him so fast that
Father Mouse’s heart thumped with terror. But he must get that bear
clear out of their tree, and at last he dropped to the ground and raced
madly across an open space to another tree, with Chinook close at his
heels. His ruse was working altogether too well, for the little bear all
but clapped his paw on him once. He did get the tip of his long tail.
But Father Tree Mouse remembered a knothole he had seen one day when out
exploring, and straight for that knothole he darted, tumbling into it
not an instant too soon. For a time Chinook watched the knothole for him
to come out, but by and by his mother called him, and when he came back,
Father Tree Mouse had left and gone back home.
“Do you know,” he told Mother Tree Mouse, “we ought to find some nice,
big knothole and move into it before that bear comes back.” And before
another night had passed, they had found one, and moved the babies.
CHAPTER VI
MAZAMA THE MYSTERIOUS
Sometimes in the black of night, the cubs would be awakened by a weird,
unearthly screech, but peer as they might from the mouth of their den
into the shadowy woods they could never see what manner of creature it
could be. When they asked Mother Brown Bear, she said it would be better
for them to watch and find out for themselves. Mother Brown Bear wanted
them to learn to use their wits for they were going to need them, in
their life of hunting and being hunted.
Sometimes the cubs thought they saw two great round eyes gleaming at
them in the moonlight, high up in the branches of a tree. Weird voice
and gleaming eyes, that was their first impression of Mazama the
Mysterious, whose hunting call startled every mouse till its trembling
set the grasses waving and showed Mazama where it was hiding.
One night Mother Brown Bear decided to take Snookie and Chinook on a
mousing expedition. Now the mice which were her favorite game were the
stupid burrow mice who live in tunnels underground and often destroy
whole crops for the farmers. The forest floor is threaded with these
tunnels, whose entrances are hidden beneath stumps and fallen logs, or
come out beneath overhanging rocks; and the moment danger threatens,
into one of these tunnels they will pop, and run and run, away down
underneath the sod. But a bear’s sharp nose can smell a mouse even when
it is hiding underground, and if he cannot catch it in the open, he can
sometimes dig it out, though he has to be pretty spry, because while he
is digging at one point, the mouse may be running to some other branch
of his tunnel. That night Mother Brown Bear wasn’t so anxious to catch
mice herself as she was to teach the cubs. But though Snookie and
Chinook raced joyously after every red-backed burrow mouse they saw,
till they had chased them all into their secret tunnels, they caught not
one of the fleet-footed fellows.
By and by the great, round, yellow moon peeped into the pine woods.
Suddenly a weird, unearthly cry shivered through the air, and the cubs
shrank trembling against their mother. It was Mazama the Mysterious.
“Watch, now!” whispered Mother Brown Bear. “You’ll soon find out what
you’ve been afraid of.” Then across the opening between the tall tree
trunks swept a gray shape as soundlessly as a shadow. It was nothing but
a bird, a round-eyed barn-owl, though with a beak as sharp as a scimitar
and great curved claws like swords. A mouse came to the door of his
tunnel right beneath the huge gray bird, and feeling as if the great
eyes were upon him, made a dash for a better hiding place, but with one
swift dart the owl had set his beak in him and was winging his silent
way to the limb of a tree, where he held the mouse down with one talon
while he ate him alive, and at the despairing squeak of his victim,
every burrow mouse within earshot told himself: “Thank goodness, I’m not
in _his_ skin!” But because they had very little brains, they started
right out into the open again to hunt their suppers, and the next thing
they knew, Mazama had caught another of them. While the three bears
watched, he swooped again and again on his silent wings at the mice he
could see so plainly with his great round eyes. So this, thought
Chinook, was what had frightened him,—only a bird! There is nothing like
looking a terror straight in the face.
Just as Mother Brown Bear was ready to start for home, another
terrifying sound pierced the stillness, and it was startlingly near. The
sound came from behind them, and the breeze was in the wrong direction
to tell them what it was. It was the screeching, catlike voice that
betrayed its owner. “Is it Cougar?” trembled Snookie.
“No, come and I’ll show you who it is,” and Mother Brown Bear began
circling till they could approach the newcomer with the wind in their
faces, Chinook wriggled his nose inquiringly. “It’s a cat, even if it
isn’t Cougar,” he decided.
“Yes, it’s a cat, but no one we need be afraid of. It’s Paddy-paws, the
bobcat. He’s a great mouser. Better watch him: you can learn a lot from
the way he goes about it,” Mother Brown Bear told them softly.
“He might catch us too,” shivered Snookie, clutching at her mother with
both arms.
“Not now that you’ve grown as big as he is.”
“Is he a good fighter, Mother?” asked Chinook.
“He can put up one of the best fights of any animal of his size, if his
life or his kittens are in danger. But he never courts trouble, and he
will leave you alone if you leave him alone.”
“Huh!” sniffed Chinook. “I’ll bet he isn’t any better mouser than I’m
going to be.”
“Don’t boast,” said Mother Brown Bear. “It would be better to watch and
see how he does it.”
“Is he a better mouser than Mazama?”
“Watch and see,” was all Mother Brown Bear would tell them.
Once when the Ranger’s Boy had caught a glimpse of Paddy-paws crouched
along the limb of a tree, he had at first taken him for merely the
largest and handsomest tiger cat he had ever seen. “Pussy, pussy!” he
had called ingratiatingly, wondering how a house cat came to be in the
woods.
“_P-f-f-f!_” had hissed Paddy-paws, leaping away to another tree. Then
the Boy had seen how his tail was bobbed, and his ears pointed, and how
large his paws were, and how wildly his yellow eyes gleamed.
“You’re certainly not very friendly,” thought the Boy, “but I suppose
it’s because you’re afraid. You are trying to frighten me with all that
hissing.”
At first the cubs could only see that something moved stealthily, body
held close to the ground, through the shadows of the tree trunks. Then
as the big cat pounced on a mouse, they could see that he was a
handsome, tawny fellow with spots on his sides. Then Mazama gave another
screech.
The bobcat answered with an angry yowl. “Keep out of my hunting
grounds!” he yelled at Mazama, and began sniffing about till he
discovered a big mouse hole. Crouched there ready to pounce the minute
its tenant showed his face, his attention was distracted by another
mouse, who ran across the open, and with one leap he was upon it with a
pitiless barbed paw. But Mazama had also been after that mouse, and the
same instant Paddy caught it by the tail, the great owl snapped his beak
in the mouse’s neck.
“_Pht-t-t!_” warned Paddy-paws. “That’s my mouse. Let go!” and he
slapped with his free paw at the bird. Mazama gave a hoot of rage and
slashed at the bobcat with one foot as he raised his wings and sailed
away, bearing the bone of contention in his beak. The cat had a red
scratch down one ear. That punishing claw had come very near his face.
But he also clutched a handful of owl feathers.
“How much better,” pointed out Mother Brown Bear, “not to have scrapped
over one miserable mouse. Now they’re both hurt. And there are a million
mice left to catch.”
Paddy-paws ran away into the shadows, perhaps to massage, with moistened
paw, the stinging scratch on his ear.
“He’s feeling real scrappy tonight,” laughed Chinook. “But he sure is
‘some mouser.’”
CHAPTER VII
LOST IN THE FOG
August came, with its hot sun and the salt-smelling white fog from the
ocean. Mother Brown Bear decided to take the cubs on a trip high among
the cool mountain peaks. “You know Chinook means snow-eater,” she told
her son. “We must see if the name fits. When the warm West winds come in
spring and melt the snow, the Indians call it the Chinook. And when the
first of their tribe named himself, he took a bite of snow. They even
call these big salmon that come from the sea to spawn the Chinook
salmon, because every spring they swim so far up these icy streams.”
“Snow would taste good today,” panted the little bear, “but I thought it
only came in winter.”
“Away up on the high peaks,” his mother told him, “there is snow all the
year around. But you are going to see even more exciting things than
summer snow before we have finished our trip.”
It was strange, starting out in the fog. Though the gray mist shut off
all the way before him, and Chinook could hardly see a tree trunk right
ahead, he could tell it was there by the message his wonderful little
nose gave him. He could tell even better in this moist air than he had
been able to in dry weather, and he could tell the difference between a
pine tree and a spruce tree as easily as the Ranger’s Boy could have
told, with his eyes shut, whether they were going to have onions or
cabbage for dinner.
The woods were strangely still today. The birds had little heart to sing
when, for all they could see, some enemy might be creeping up behind
them; for birds have to depend on their eyes more than their noses. As
the cubs padded along after their mother, the scent of whose warm fur
led the way, Chinook paused to sniff a delicious odor that was new to
him. Following his nose, he presently came to a swampy place where his
feet sank into the moist ground and his face was brushed by tiger
lilies. Now a lily means something very different to a bear from what it
does to a bee or a boy. It was the onionlike bulbs at their roots that
interested Mother Brown Bear’s young hopeful. It was the lily he had
smelled, and that made his mouth water. In another instant, without once
calling to tell his mother what had become of him, he started digging
them up with his claws and gobbling them down, till his furry face was
streaked with mud and his sides were rounded.
After he had eaten all the lily bulbs he could possibly hold, he began
to wonder if his mother and Snookie were waiting for him. More likely
they had not even missed him. Now his stomach, which was used to very
little besides the warm milk from which he had not yet been weaned,
began hurting dreadfully. The little bear whimpered, but he didn’t dare
make much of a noise after what his mother had told him about Cougar,
the California lion, and his fondness for having bear cub for breakfast.
On all sides Chinook could see nothing but gray fog. My, how his stomach
ached! And he was lost from the great, wise mother who always knew how
to make his troubles disappear. What if Cougar were hiding there in the
fog, ready to pounce upon him as Paddy-paws pounced on the mice? Slowly
it came to him that there was no one to come to the rescue, unless he
rescued himself, and he set his wits to work. Why, of course! Why hadn’t
he thought before that all he had to do was to follow his own trail back
to where it crossed the one his mother had left for him to follow! For a
bear, like most four-footed folk, has little scent glands in his feet,
and everywhere he goes, he leaves a trace of his own peculiar perfume on
the ground. It isn’t often strong enough for a boy to detect, but a cat,
or a dog, or a bear, or a mouse can tell it easily. So around and around
went the little lost bear, retracing every step of the way he had come
through the mystic maze that was the lily swamp, till at last he came
out on the trail where Mother Brown Bear had left her big footprints.
With a happy squeal he raced ahead. His mother was just coming back for
him; but to his hurt surprise she only gave him a sound spank with her
paw, and growled for him to come along, quick! But when he told her
about the stomach ache, she stopped and hunted around with her nose in
the fog until she had found a certain little red mushroom. “Eat that,”
she told him, “and you’ll soon feel better.”
Chinook obediently bit off the top of the toadstool, but instantly
wished he hadn’t, for it had the most puckery, peppery taste, not at all
like those he had sampled before. He didn’t want to swallow such
medicine, but she insisted. Then for a few minutes he felt worse than
ever, But as soon as he got over feeling seasick and the lily bulbs had
come up the way they had gone down, he began to feel better. But it was
a meek little bear who promised never again to sample anything his
mother had not told him to eat.
For a while the cubs raced merrily along, while Mother Brown Bear kept
up a lively clip. But as they climbed more and more steeply over the
canyon walls, their feet felt heavier and their breath came shorter.
After a while they reached an altitude where the fog did not follow, but
lay like a cloud in the canyon beneath them. Up here, above the fog
belt, the sun was shining, birds were singing, and the world was bright
with the green of fir trees and the pink and blue of wild flowers that
had a mild sweetish taste. Puffy white clouds sailed slowly across the
deep blue of the sky, and the air was so cool and bracing that the cubs
forgot their fatigue and started playing tag.
Then a terrifying thing happened. The ground, which had always been so
firm beneath their feet, began to rock with a sidewise motion that
fairly made them dizzy. One long quiver, and the earth ceased quaking,
but it was their first earthquake, and the cubs did not know what might
happen next. Their mother explained it to them.
Away down deep underground, she told them, it was not solid rock and
earth, but steam from the subterranean fires that sometimes spouted out
of the volcanic peaks. It was this steam that made the ground rock, out
there on the Pacific Coast. Once within her memory there had been a
mountain, that white-topped one they could see far ahead, that had
spouted red fire into the night, for it was a volcano, and there had
been an eruption. And even though that had happened a hundred miles
away, it had shaken the ground so hard (there had been such a big
earthquake) that the rocks had gone sliding down the mountainsides with
a noise like thunder, and in some places the earth had cracked right
open for ever so many feet.
“Will that ever happen again?” asked Snookie, her eyes round with awe.
“What has happened once may always happen again,” was all Mother Brown
Bear could tell her. “If we do have a big earthquake, we must run right
out into the open, because it may shake our den to pieces.”
Little did she dream that the day might come when the cubs would be glad
to remember her advice.
CHAPTER VIII
TEAM WORK
As the three bears crossed the shallow head of the river, whose course
they had been following up the mountainsides, from the grass almost
under their feet leapt what at first glimpse they took to be a mammoth
mouse.
Of course they chased it. Soon they noticed that it ran very differently
from the mice they had known. Instead of scuttling along on all fours,
with its long tail streaming out behind, this one gave mammoth leaps,
and its tail was just a bunch of brown fur. Then they noticed what long
ears it had, and what broad hind feet. “It’s a hare,” signalled Mother
Brown Bear, “a ‘snowshoe rabbit.’”
The big brown hare raced so fast that it was soon out of sight; then
instead of staying safely away, back it came circling, to stand on its
hind legs with its long ears pointed forward to catch the sounds these
strange newcomers were making, and its paws folded on its furry chest.
The minute it caught sight of the pursuing cubs, it leapt away again
with such great bounds that the bears again lost sight of it.
“You’d never catch it that way in a million years,” Mother Brown Bear
laughed, her black eyes twinkling as the cubs returned.
“Why not?” Chinook demanded. “Let’s wait until it comes back, and have
another try.”
“I don’t mind resting here a while,” said Mother Brown Bear, seating
herself with her back to a rock and her legs straight out in front of
her, while the cubs sprawled out in the sunshine. Up here so high above
their woods, where the wind was cool, the sun felt good on their fur.
“In chasing a hare,” Mother Brown Bear told them, “you never want to
follow right along in its tracks, because it can generally outrun you.”
“I thought you said it was a rabbit,” said Snookie.
“They call this one a snowshoe rabbit,” her mother explained, “but it’s
really a hare, a snowshoe hare. You see how broad its feet are. In
winter when there is snow on the mountainsides, its wide furry feet keep
it on the tops of the drifts, where an animal with slender feet sinks
in. In creeping up on a hare, you can sometimes pounce the way a bobcat
pounces on a mouse, but that is only possible when the wind’s in your
face (blowing from the hare to you) and it’s curled up asleep and
doesn’t see you. If the wind blows from you to the hare, it gets your
scent, and takes warning. Then remember, you can’t make the teeniest,
weeniest sound or it catches it with those great, funnel-like ears. But
where a thing is hard to catch in a straightaway race for it, that is
the time to try strategy, and where one pursuer cannot catch a supper
that runs so fast, it is sometimes possible for partners to work it
between them. I have seen a family of bobcats bring down a ‘snowshoe
rabbit’ by careful teamwork.”
“Tell us about it,” begged the cubs, who did not see the hare looking at
them from behind the stump, to which it had circled in its foolish
curiosity to find out more about its enemies. It was wriggling its nose
this way and that, for the wind was in its face, and for the moment it
was safe.
“It was a cold moonlight night,” began Mother Brown Bear, “when
Paddy-paws and his mate went ‘rabbit’ hunting and took their five
half-grown kittens along. The kittens were handsome, bright-eyed little
fellows anxious to learn how to do everything their parents did. Well,
first Paddy himself gave chase to a big brown hare, who went hopping
away so fast that the heavy cat was all out of breath before he had come
anywhere near his quarry. But Mrs. Paddy-paws had stationed the kittens
around every here and there through the woods, and just as the old cat
had to give it up for the time, she was right there ready to take his
place. They made a regular relay race of it. When Mrs. Paddy-paws had
chased the hare around in a circle and got so winded that _she_ had to
stop, the nearest kitten took up the race, and by that time Paddy had
his breath back and cut straight across the circle to take the kitten’s
place. All this time, of course, the hare was getting more and more worn
out, but it still kept leaping ahead so fast that it nearly got away
after all. Yes, sir, it took every one of those seven cats to catch that
hare. They certainly worked hard for the quick lunch that they got out
of it, and they had to work harder still before they had caught enough
to satisfy those hungry kittens. But teamwork finally did it.”
At that, the hare, whose eyes had been nearly popping out of his head
with surprise, leapt away as fast as he could go.
“Hey, Snookie,” Chinook gave his sister a resounding slap, “Let’s try a
relay race the next time we see a hare.”
“All right, but you needn’t hit so hard,” and Snookie landed him a biff
that sent them tumbling downhill in a wrestling match.
Mother Brown Bear yawned and stretched. “Come, children,” she bade them,
as she rose to her feet, “we have a long way to go if we are to have
supper in Rat Town.”
At the word, the cubs went racing after her, and a little further on,
their eyes brightened when they came to a footprint that looked almost
like a squirrel’s but which smelled distinctly mousy. It was the track
of a mountain pack-rat. The cubs sniffed curiously. It was a part of
their schooling to learn the meaning of every odor, for next year, when
they had to earn their own livings, they would have to know where to
find enough to eat, and then their noses would be a bigger help than
eyes and ears put together.
For a few minutes they followed the trail of the pack-rat, which smelled
stronger and stronger. Of a sudden, the rat himself darted off to the
right. Mother Brown Bear watched to see if the cubs would profit by what
she had just been telling them. Quick as thought, Snookie was after that
rat. Quick as thought, Chinook saved his breath and watched to see where
the race would lead, and when the rat began circling further to the
right, so that the wind was in his face, Chinook made a dash across the
circle and took Snookie’s place. “Good work!” thought Mother Brown Bear,
proud that her children were so quick to learn. For a couple of minutes
Chinook raced with all his might, but the rat ran faster. Then Snookie
came leaping downhill to take his place as the rat darted past her, and
just as she lost her balance and went tumbling head over ears, her
brother had taken a short cut and was ready to take her place; and the
next thing that old rat knew, he was flattened out under Chinook’s paw.
“You see,” Mother Brown Bear told them, “there is nothing like team
work. The reason a bear is so brainy is because he is always watching
other forest folk to see what he can learn from them; and when cubs are
too little to make their way alone, they want to stand by each other.”
“How Mother does love to preach,” thought Chinook, but he didn’t dare
say so, and the time was coming when he was glad to remember what she
had told him. But if his nose was any judge, they were nearing the Rat
Town she had promised to show them.
CHAPTER IX
RAT TOWN
The village they were approaching looked like a toy Indian encampment,
with its tiny tepees of sticks and trash.
The inhabitants were not much larger than burrow mice, were these
mountain pack-rats, so-called, who scurried about packing great armfuls
of twigs and leaves to make their homes secure. Some of the tepees were
built as high as Chinook’s head, when he stood on his hind legs, and he
could have crawled inside, had the doorways been large enough. How such
tiny fellows could build so high, he could not imagine till he saw half
a dozen rats setting one stick in place with their squirrel-like paws.
At the approach of the three bears, the sentinel mice, who had been
sitting on their roof-tops, promptly stamped a warning signal, and every
rat in Rat Town scampered, terrified, into his tent.
“Hurray!” Chinook exulted. “Watch me catch them!”
“You’ll not find it so easy as you might think,” his mother warned him.
“They have none of them lost the use of their hind legs.” And indeed,
the three bears had a lively time of it before Mother Brown Bear had
satisfied her keen mountain appetite. Still, it was a paradise for
mousers.
That same night the Ranger’s Boy was having his own experience with
Oregon pack-rats.
The Forest Ranger, in his horseback trips through the mountains, found
it convenient to have a shelter shack in the fir woods just beneath
Lookout Peak. This time the Boy had gone with his father, who had to
find out how much timber up that way was ripe for cutting, for a lumber
company wanted to buy some. For the first time that summer, they were to
spend a couple of nights at the cabin. To their surprise, they found
that a family of little pack-rats had taken possession in their absence.
The blankets were chewed and pieces torn off, presumably so that the rat
babies would have a soft bed. The flour that the Ranger had left in a
bag hung from the rafters so that the porcupines couldn’t reach it had
been spilled through a hole that the rats had chewed in one corner of
the bag, for, unlike the prickly ones, the little rats had been able to
run down the string as easily as so many circus acrobats. The lid had
been lifted off the tea jar and the tea had been sampled, though with no
great relish, for most of it had been left untouched. Even as the Boy
entered the dusky doorway, he spied three of the mouse-like gray rats,
no larger than chipmunks, tugging with their handlike paws at the lid of
the molasses can, which appeared to fit too tightly for them to manage.
The dusty paw marks up and down its sides told that they must have tried
it many times. At the Boy’s laugh, they ran, but they were bold, and
were soon back again, working away in the shadows that his candle
lantern threw.
That night the Boy, who slept in a bunk of fir boughs opposite his
father’s, was awakened by a great scuffling and scurrying over floor and
roof, and once by angry squeaks and squeals. Another time something warm
and furry, with toe nails that tickled, ran across his forehead. A third
time he was awakened by a resounding thump. It was one of his heavy
hiking boots, which he had been advised to take to bed with him—for fear
the rodents might have a relish for smoked-tanned moose hide smeared
with neat’s-foot oil. They had evidently tugged at the heavy boot until
they had hauled it over the edge of the bunk. The Boy watched them with
one eye half open to see what would happen next. With a huge sound of
scraping over the split log floor, the three little rats dragged the
boot to one corner of the cabin, and there tugged and panted in their
effort to drag it into their hole. The Boy, feeling assured that that
was something they could never do, and knowing that they could never
lift it to carry it away through the cabin window, and being in that
optimistically drowsy state where one doesn’t care much what happens
anyway, allowed himself to fall asleep again.
In the morning he found the appropriated boot filled to the top with
stores the little rats had sought to hide there. First there was his
soap, which they had nibbled all around the edges with their pointed
teeth. Next came a mixture of pine nuts, bits of the cold lunch the
Ranger had brought in his saddle-bags and thrown in the cold fireplace,
a button they had chewed from his sleeve, and a much-gnawed pencil,
while the toe of the boot was stuffed with half a dozen burrs which they
evidently treasured, and with the fragments of the greasy paper in which
they had brought their breakfast bacon. As for the bacon itself, that
was nowhere to be seen, though a greasy, paw-marked trail led up the
side of the cabin wall and into a corner of the rafters. The tin in
which they had stowed it for safekeeping had been uncovered and
thoroughly decorated with telltale footprints. The Ranger and his Boy
doubled with laughter.
“Pack-rats are a pest,” pronounced the Ranger, when he found his own
boots, still safe at the foot of his bunk but nibbled all across the
tops. “I’ll take you up to an abandoned mining camp some day, where the
pack-rats have taken possession of every cabin. With doors and windows
boarded up so that bears and bobcats can’t get in, they live there,
producing about four litters a year of perhaps four to a litter, till
there must be thousands of them. Where nothing larger than a weasel can
get at them to keep their numbers down, it’s destroyed the Balance of
Nature. Some day I’d like to find the time to clear them out, or there
will soon be such millions that they’ll come migrating around the
settlements, destroying crops and doing no end of damage.”
“How are you going to ‘clean them out,’ Dad? Going to take the Pied
Piper along?” laughed the Boy.
“All I’ll have to do, I imagine, is to destroy the old log cabins,
because as soon as the hawks and owls, bears and bobcats, foxes and
coyotes, and all the animals whose natural food they are, can get at
them, the Balance will soon be restored. As for the Pied Piper, I don’t
know if these rats care for music, but thank goodness, they aren’t the
common Norway, disease-spreading rat of our city wharves. ‘Trade rats,’
campers call these little fellows, because they have a funny way of
trading some of their trash for some of the food they salvage. There,
just look at that!” and he reached for the butter tin, which also had
been raided. It was half full of bark. “I suppose they think that kind
of trade will square it with us.”
“Well, they may relish bark for breakfast,” sighed the Boy, “but I’d as
soon have bacon and butter to go with these biscuits. Thank goodness, I
put the biscuit tin under a heavy weight last night. I thought I had
placed the bacon there, too.”
“You did,” agreed the Ranger, “but not under a heavy enough weight. See,
they lifted that hardwood stick right off! You wouldn’t think they had
the strength to, but I suppose it’s team work.”
“The brazen things!” howled the Boy, convulsed with mirth, for one rat
had just peeked over the edge of the table, filched a half biscuit from
his very plate and made off with it, and now sat with a fragment he had
broken off eating it as he sat up squirrel-wise holding the biscuit in
his paws.
“They really seem more like squirrels than rats,” thought the Boy aloud.
He was noticing that instead of the coarse hair and naked tails of the
city rat, they had soft gray fur and snowy under sides, with tails
almost as thick as a ground squirrel’s.
“They aren’t real rats,” agreed his father, “but mice, in spite of the
name. In some places they have taken to nesting in the tree tops, and in
some places they burrow. They nest in the branches overhanging swampy
places, and burrow in sandy plateaus. But up here in the higher
altitudes they either live among the rocks or build tepees of trash.”
“Dad, do they store food for winter?”
“Just like squirrels, and there is one thing they do that is rabbitlike.
I’ve seen them drum an alarm on the ground with their heels when they
have to send a warning signal a long distance.”
“They’re sure cunning rascals.”
“Altogether too ’cute for me. I wouldn’t mind an occasional half pound
of bacon, if only they wouldn’t dig up the pine seeds that I plant in my
reforesting nurseries.”
“They are vegetarians, mostly, aren’t they?”
“Yes, and down in San Luis Potosi they sell them at the market stalls to
be cooked like rabbits. Look out! Is that your pocket knife that
fellow’s dragging across your bunk?”
The Boy made a dash for his property. “Can you beat it!”
But up in Rat Town they were giving Chinook a merry chase.
CHAPTER X
A LIVE SNOWBALL
The day after they visited Rat Town, Mother Brown Bear led the cubs high
above the surrounding mountain slopes to where a sandy meadow stretched
to the foot of snow-clad Lookout Peak.
This eleven-thousand-foot sky-meadow was a riot of wild flowers. Yellow
mimulas and purple pussy-paws carpeted the ground beneath their feet,
while snowy slopes, blue in the cloud shadows, towered to the summit or
swept in a long slope to the spruce woods lying dark green beneath them.
The air was as fresh as a drink from a snow-fed river.
What amazed the cubs was that great swarms of red and black butterflies
danced above them. Snookie and Chinook had a gay time trying to catch
them. Where the purple and white honey-lupin set their noses wriggling,
the butterflies danced in a cloud. Mother Brown Bear was amazed to see
butterflies in this chill altitude, for though she had been a great
traveller, she had always before found them down in the warm meadows
where the bees gathered the honey that she loved. She did not know that
these butterflies were migrating South for the winter. But they had not
come all this way to chase butterflies.
What Mother Brown Bear liked best about the summer snow fields was that
here she often found whole swarms of frozen grasshoppers. To hunt for
this delicacy she now called the cubs to the foot of the nearest
snowbank, and while she dug and sniffed and feasted, they lapped the
strange white stuff that felt so cold. Then Snookie fell down and rolled
head over heels, and to Chinook’s surprise, the half melted snow clung
to her till she looked like a little white bear instead of a cinnamon
cub. The next thing Mother Brown Bear knew, the cubs were climbing the
steep snowbanks for the sake of coasting down. Sometimes they sat with
feet straight out in front of them, but oftener they threw themselves
down flat on their stomachs and did it “belly bumps.” Over and over and
over they tried it, while their mother searched for grasshoppers, till
she really began to worry for fear they might wear all their fur off.
They never forgot the fun they had on their first snow slide.
Now Chinook little dreamed that the Ranger’s Boy who had passed them one
day was right down there in the fir woods whose pointed spires he could
see from an overhanging ledge. Nor did the Boy dream that the roguish
little bear was also off on a camping trip.
Chinook, having found the snow harder on the northern slope and easier
to slide on, had started off with a sturdy shove of his boylike hind
feet and had set himself going so far and so fast that he couldn’t stop.
On the warm western slope the snowbank soon came to a stop, and there
Snookie was content to coast while her mother nosed about for frozen
grasshoppers. But on the northern side it sloped in an unbroken expanse
of hard white that glittered in the reddening sunlight, and never
stopped until it had reached in a long tongue down the gulch into the
fir woods.
“What’s that?” exclaimed the Ranger’s Boy, as he and his father peered
at a small black object darting over the snow field; but it went so fast
that they couldn’t make out what was coming.
Now the snow up above, where the chill winds blew, was crusted hard and
firm, and the little bear, for it was he, just skimmed along as if he
were on ice. But down in the gulch where the snow ran into the fir
woods, the top few inches had partly melted till it was just sticky, and
clung to the feet like a plaster. As Chinook reached the level stretch
and tried to get to all fours, he only succeeded in turning head over
heels with the momentum of his long slide. The next thing he knew, the
soft snow began sticking to him inches deep, till, by the time he had
stopped rolling and come to a standstill, the Boy would have taken him
for a mammoth snowball if he hadn’t seen him coming.
“Dad, I want that cub!” he shouted, stripping off his coat as he ran,
but clinging to the coiled lead rope he had on his arm.
“Leave him alone!” warned his father, who was leading the pack-horse;
but the Boy had already thrown his coat over the struggling snowball,
and the Ranger raced to his assistance.
Five minutes later a man and a boy, both scratched and bleeding but
completely triumphant, had a small and frightened and very angry little
bear on one end of the lead rope, with the other end tied to a fir tree.
“Now watch me make friends with him!” the Boy exulted, running to the
cabin for something to feed his unexpected guest.
“I’ll watch!” his father laughed, starting after the pack-horse.
[Illustration: He turned head over heels with the momentum of the
slide.]
The Boy searched the cabin hastily. There on the top shelf stood a
tightly lidded tin pail of brown sugar that the dampness had converted
into one great lump. Chipping off a pocketful of hard lumps, the Boy
returned to where the little bear chafed and struggled at the end of his
leash. Had they not known just how to tie the knot, he would have choked
himself. He was just beginning to gnaw on the rope when the Boy threw
him a great hard lump of the sugar. Then he went around the corner of
the cabin and peeked to see what would happen.
Chinook, finding the woods as silent as if he were the only living thing
about, paused in his chewing to wriggle his nose at the delicious
smelling tidbit, and suddenly he realized that he was famished. What
could it be, he asked himself? Not wild honey, but something almost as
good! After all, he found himself unhurt, and if that Boy came again, he
thought he could hold his own in a tussle.
Gingerly he reached forth a snowy paw to draw the goody nearer, then he
licked the brown lump with an inquiring pink tongue. Um! Never in all
his short life had he tasted anything better. Bears have a great sweet
tooth. He crunched it delightedly.
Now began an experiment that the Boy had performed with other wild folk.
Would the cub be too frightened to respond? Stepping quietly into view,
he held out a great handful of the tempting lumps, and the little bear
sniffed longingly. But at the same time he eyed the blue-overalled biped
with not a little suspicion. He remembered, however, that it was the
same Boy who had passed them once before, and who had not harmed him;
but then Mother Brown Bear had taught him to be wary of what he did not
understand.
By and by the Boy threw him another lump of sugar. That was a language
he did understand. Chinook snapped it up, and his mouth watered for
more. He could smell that the Boy had more to give him. Softly, slowly
and ever so unalarmingly, the Boy came a few steps nearer, holding out
the sweets, the cub watching intently. It took quite a while, for the
little bear had to focus his mind so whole-heartedly on the feast before
him as to forget those amazing moments when Boy and Ranger had thrown
their coats over his head and fore paws and knotted the rope around his
neck. But after all, Chinook had never in all his life received a hurt,
and his mother was not there to sound her suspicions. Why not consider
the Boy a friend? In the stillness of the mountain twilight the miracle
was accomplished, and the furry woods boy allowed the human Boy to feed
him.
Then from behind a fallen log not two stones’ throw distant the Boy saw
the massive head and shoulders of Mother Brown Bear. That might be a
different story. His father saw her too, for from the high little cabin
window he called: “_Quick! Inside!_” Out he drew his revolver, in case
the alarmed mother should think it necessary to demolish the cub’s
abductor. But the Boy ran indoors, and then both watched from the
window.
“Aw, it’s all right!” Chinook assured his mother, and she could tell
from one sniff at his sugary face that he had been faring well. But she
was still so nervous at having found him gone, and so angry at the
thought that he had been captured, that—after nuzzling him all over to
make sure no bones were broken—she only grunted a harsh “Come on!” to
hide her fear, and led the way rapidly back into the woods, where
Snookie waited. But Chinook was brought up so abruptly by his tether
that his feet slid out from under him.
“Could I cut him loose?” whispered the Boy.
“No need,” smiled his father, for even as they spoke, Mother Brown Bear
came back to gnaw furiously at the rope, and in a moment the little bear
was free.
“Now he’ll wear a collar,” laughed the Boy.
“Don’t you believe it! His mother will have the rest of that rope off in
no time,” the Ranger reassured him.
“Isn’t it a shame we couldn’t be friends, that little bear and I?”
“You could, if this were a National Park where bears are never hunted.”
CHAPTER XI
THE INDIAN TRAPPER
While on Lookout Peak, the cubs were shown the elk that Cougar hunted,
and once they found his huge, catlike footprints, which made Mother
Brown Bear take the cubs hustling back to safer territory without pause
for rabbit hunting.
On their return trip, she took them circling southward along a little
travelled trail, till after camping for several days through the green
gloom of a spruce wood, where tiny streams tinkled unseen among the
dense undergrowth, and wild berries, lily roots and pine nuts spiced
their diet, they came to a stand of mammoth sugar pines, with whose
equally mammoth cones the cubs played football. Here they came very near
pouncing on a prickly porcupine, for which, their mother told them, they
would have been sorry, for his barbed stiff hair would have hurt their
paws terribly.
When it rained, they found an incense cedar, beneath whose flat, ferny
yellow-green fronds they kept as dry as they would have been in their
rock den. It was all a part of their education, for the more
tree-learning they acquired, the better would they be able to take care
of themselves and their families in the years to come.
As they got down to the lower levels, not far from the seashore, Mother
Brown Bear showed them a grove of giant Redwoods (Sequoia Sempervirens),
which in that moist climate were always green. The cubs felt as small as
mice beside the Big Trees, up and down whose awesome trunks they
climbed, exploring. These trees had been seedlings when the world was
young, four thousand years ago: they were almost prehistoric monsters of
the vegetable kingdom. The cubs were disappointed to find that the cones
of these huge trees were the tiniest of any they had even seen. They
found a hole in a fallen log that would have made a den for a dozen
bears rolled into one, and they coaxed hard to be allowed to stay there;
but Mother Brown Bear, sniffing inquiringly about, found that it
belonged to another bear who must have been, like themselves, off
camping, and would not have allowed them to hunt in his territory.
Then vacation time was over, and they were safely back in their spruce
woods, with the grove of yellow pines for neighbors. And thankful they
were to see the old familiar spots, for a bear loves home, despite his
vacation rambling. The soft haze of Indian summer had turned to frosty
mornings when Douglas, the red squirrel, and all his tribe chattered
busily garnering the pine and spruce nuts for their winter larder. Mrs.
Tree Mouse had her children trained to look out for themselves, and
Paddy-paws the bobcat and Mazama the mysterious owl had reduced the
numbers of the red-backed burrow mice who ran squeaking across the open.
Mother Cinnamon Bear left the cubs more and more to their own devices.
One day Chinook discovered a strange footprint. It was not that of any
four-footed creature, nor was it that of the Ranger and his Boy. It was
that of the Indian Trapper who caught forest people for their fur. He
came every winter to set traps for bears and bobcats, foxes, skunks, and
other furry folk, and once Chinook came upon one of the bob kittens who
cried pitifully, with her paw caught fast in a steely-smelling thing
that had been hidden under the leaves and baited with a fish. And it was
the last time he ever saw that kitten! After that Chinook avoided the
neighborhood of that steel smell. But Snookie had yet to become
trap-wise. Mother Brown Bear had been off on a trip by herself, or she
could have told the cubs that the smell of steel and Indian moccasins
was a danger signal.
But one day she came back, just as the two cubs had started off on a
nutting expedition. The cold rains had set in, and they were all
beginning to feel sleepy, as bears do in winter, even when it isn’t cold
enough to make hibernating necessary. It must have been that Snookie was
thinking about how nice it would be to find some snug hollow tree and
curl up with her toes inside, and one paw over her nose, and sleep for a
week at a time. At any rate, without once noticing where she was going,
she stepped into a lynx trap. It caught her middle toe, and she gave a
yell of pain.
Now it happened that Mother Bear was quite a distance back along the
trail, and the Indian Trapper was not far ahead. For a time Snookie
tugged and struggled to get free, while Chinook sniffed about her
worriedly, his fur bristling as he detected the warning smell of steel.
But though the ribbon of the breeze soon began to tell him that the
Trapper was coming, he would not leave her. He could still fight.
On came the Trapper. He carried a belt axe, and when he saw the handsome
brown bear cub, he thought what a fine little fur rug her coat would
make for his cabin floor. Swinging his belt axe, he was about to strike
Snookie over the head. But at that psychological moment a small-sized
ball of fury hurled itself at his legs. It was Chinook, and he set his
sharp white teeth into the Indian’s leg and clawed to such good effect
that the Trapper turned his attention wholly to the bear he hadn’t
caught. That saved Snookie for the moment, and in just another instant
Mother Brown Bear came galloping to the scene of action with such a
growl of fury that the man forgot his axe and leapt for a limb of the
nearest tree. He made it just in time to draw himself out of Mother
Brown Bear’s reach, though Chinook had clung to his leg till he found
himself swinging in midair. Then while Snookie tugged agonizingly to get
her toe free, Chinook and Mother Brown Bear kept watch on the trapper,
the latter standing furiously on her hind legs to try to reach his feet,
while Chinook growled awful threats.
Finally with one good jerk and a cry of anguish, Snookie was free of the
trap, though she ran limping down the trail with her toe still in the
steel teeth. With a final volley of threats, Mother Brown Bear and her
son left the Trapper feeling about as bad as the cub felt with her
bloody little foot—that would forever after leave a four-toed footprint.
“If it hadn’t been for you,” Mother Brown Bear told Chinook, “your
sister would have been killed and eaten.”
“Huh!” sniffed her young hopeful, “we cubs fight, but I guess we’d stand
by each other when there’s trouble.”
CHAPTER XII
IN THE RAVEN’S NEST
That winter was a mild one, and though Mother Cinnamon Bear slept most
of it away in the den among the rocks, she wouldn’t let the cubs come
with her. Ever since she had gone off on that trip without them, she had
left them more and more to their own devices, till now she told them
plainly that they must find themselves a place to hibernate. Snookie
found another den just big enough for herself, and lined it with pine
needles to make it soft and warm. Chinook preferred a hollow tree, from
which hung great clusters of gray-green mistletoe with its wax-white
berries. Several times they had crossed the trail of Cougar, the
mountain lion, and he was glad to find a hole into which he himself
could barely squeeze, and high enough above ground that Cougar wouldn’t
be likely to notice it as he went by. There he would sleep for a
while—say, several weeks, longer if it turned too cold—then he would
sally forth for a few mice. But he found he hadn’t much of an appetite
when he didn’t exercise.
It was not till April that the cubs learned why Mother Brown Bear had
thought the old cave would be crowded.
There were two new little brown bears and a black one, and their mother
wouldn’t let anyone so rough as the yearling cubs come near the helpless
mites. For when the new baby brothers and sister had been born, they had
been no larger than long-legged, cocker-spaniel babies and not half so
well clothed. Even when they were two months old they were barely strong
enough to follow their mother when she went out for mushrooms.
“Huh! They’re no good!” decided Snookie and Chinook. “We can have more
fun by ourselves.”
They couldn’t remember that they too, just a twelve-month ago, had been
blind and helpless, and no end of nuisance.
It was along in May that Snookie took a notion to explore the cliff wall
high above the foaming waters of the swollen river. Chinook preferred to
stay down by the river spearing the salmon who came leaping over the
falls and swimming upstream against the rapids to lay their eggs in the
shallows, where the newly hatched fish would be safer than they would
have been in the ocean.
Snookie, reaching the wind-swept edge of the canyon wall where nothing
but twisted mountain pines and junipers could keep their foothold, found
the dwarfed trees flattened out to leeward of the wind that blew
steadily from off the broad Pacific. The little bear found that she
could walk right on top of the low-flung branches, so closely were they
matted from years of clinging together for mutual protection. Some of
these sturdy dwarfed and ancient trees grew so low and so rooflike that
Snookie could barely stand upright under the canopy they made. It was a
wonderful place to play.
A mammoth bird’s nest had been tucked away in a cranny of the rocks,
right on the canyon rim, and at first a great black bird sat on it. By
and by Snookie saw that the great black bird was gone and that a black
speck winged its way down to the river. This seemed like a good time to
inspect that nest. She found five delicious tasting eggs, and she had
just finished her meal and was trying to lick the egg from her chin,
when the great bird came back. It was Mrs. Raven, and my, what threats
and insults she did screech at Snookie! At her cries Mr. Raven, too,
appeared and joined in the clamor. (And all this time their visitor was
too surprised to think.) Then the mother bird was upon her, beating her
with her wings. The little bear hid her eyes, but her ears were still
exposed, and she gave a squeal of protest, for they would have driven
her right over the canyon rim, and Snookie had no wings. Then the father
raven pecked a beakful of fur right out of the middle of her back.
Suddenly the little bear remembered the tunnels of dwarf pine trees just
above, and making a blind dash for them, with the birds still beating
her, she crawled under this shelter, where the ravens could not follow.
My, but she was a sore little bear! But here she was, at any rate, safe,
if not altogether sound, and she told herself she knew something about
ravens that Chinook hadn’t learned. Besides, those eggs certainly were
delicious, she comforted herself, as she curled up to sleep off her
troubles.
CHAPTER XIII
CHINOOK PLAYS THE CLOWN
Chinook had fished till his sides were rounded with his catch, then he
had curled up in a ball in a tree top and taken a nap, while Snookie was
having her adventure.
When he awoke, he went for a swim in the sunny shallows, and then he was
hungry again, for Chinook was growing fast. Just as the lowering sun
began sending slant bars through the trees that fringed the canyon rim,
he came to where the canyon floor widened into a meadow sweet with
honey-lupin, shoulder high. Bees hummed among the blossoms, and it
occurred to him that there might be a bee tree somewhere near by. Sure
enough, a tantalizing odor came to him on the breeze. It was the work of
but a few minutes to follow his nose till he found the tree where the
bees were going in and out in a black swarm.
The owners objected hotly to his discovery of their hidden stores, but
they couldn’t sting much through his thick fur. They really could do
little harm except about his face, and with slaps of his fore paws he
kept the insects away from his eyes and nose as he climbed the tree.
Then a red hot fellow left a sting in his sensitive nose and several
burned his ears and lips, but he had had experience of bee trees before,
and he managed to keep his eyes protected. Then, oh, joy of joys, he had
his head in the hollow where they kept their honey, and as he sampled
it, he considered it more than worth the stings they had given him. Face
and fore paws quickly became plastered with the sticky mass, and when he
had made very sure he could reach no more, he backed down the tree
leaving sticky paw marks all along the trunk.
Now the ground beneath was strewn with dried pine needles and fallen
leaves, and when he walked, the leaves stuck to his feet. Biting at them
to see what was the matter, he got his sticky face all plastered with
twigs and leaves, and trying to wipe them off with his fore paws, he
only made things worse, until his eyes were too covered with leaves and
he couldn’t even see where he was going. Stumbling blindly about, and
still slapping at the bees who seemed to want to get eaten alive, he
fairly tripped over his clumsy feet, which were now twice as wide as
they ought to have been. He bumped and tumbled about, and wandered
around and around, now pawing at his eyes but only making more leaves
stick to his lids, plastering them the tighter. It was a senseless
predicament to have gotten into. Then his ears pricked to the sound of
running water. Enraged bees still scrambled through his fur looking for
a vulnerable spot in which to leave their stings, but Chinook was headed
for that sound of running water. It would cool the feverish feeling in
his nose.
Just as the little bear had begun to wonder if he were not wandering
around in some bad dream, he stumbled off the bank and went splash into
a deep pool. Striking out as vigorously as if he knew just where he were
going, he began circling around and around, for it was a tiny whirlpool
he had fallen into. It was lucky for him it wasn’t a large one. But the
swift, churning water did its work on him: it washed off the honey and
the clinging leaves.
As soon as Chinook could open his eyes again, he floundered out of that
pool a cleansed and chastened little bear.
CHAPTER XIV
A MOUSE ON WINGS
“What’s that?” whispered Snookie, as the cubs were starting out one
evening in the glow of the long June sunset to explore a new part of the
woods.
“A bird, of course!” Chinook told her, as an orange-winged creature that
at first looked as large as a crow swooped and darted after the flying
insects which were its prey. But as the cubs came nearer, they could see
that the body that carried those wide wings was only the size of a
sparrow’s.
“It is not a bird,” said Snookie, “It has no feathers.”
“It’s a mouse, then,” guessed Chinook.
“Did you ever see a mouse fly?” asked his sister scornfully.
“Well, you see one now, don’t you?”
“I don’t know whether I do or not,” for by now the cubs could see that
the strange creature had perfectly naked wings that looked as thin as
maple leaves, and that its little body was covered with fine fur. It was
Nyc-ter-is, the bat, and except that he had no particular tail, he did
look more than a little like a mouse, though his face and ears were
rounder. His fore arms seemed to be fast to the first half of his wings,
and there three of his fingers had grown so long that they held out the
rest of the wing like the ribs of an umbrella. His thumbs, which came
just halfway along the upper edge of the wing, had great hooked claws on
them, and Snookie wondered what they could be for. He was altogether the
queerest looking small person the cubs had ever seen, as he swooped and
circled after moths and crickets and mosquitoes.
Chinook made a leap to catch him and have a closer look, but quick as
was the little bear, the bat was quicker. He squeaked viciously, and
showed his teeth, which grated together warningly.
“You little fiend!” laughed Chinook. “Are you really threatening to bite
us?”
“I’ll certainly fight if I have to!” the eerie mite assured them in a
high-pitched squeak that they understood as plain as bear talk, and off
he darted to the limb of a tree, where hung his mate, head downward.
The cubs followed curiously. It looked as if Mrs. Red Bat had simply
hung herself up by her thumbs, with her wings folded. “That’s one way of
taking a nap,” Chinook exclaimed, “Let’s try it!”
“Oh, look!” cried Snookie, “she’s got four baby bats!” And sure enough,
there were the wee mites, having their supper and hanging from their
mother’s teats.
They watched for a while. Just at dusk the mother bat flew off to get
her own supper, but though they had been watching closely, the cubs
could not see what she had done with her babies. There seemed to be no
nest, and though they climbed the tree to find out, there was not the
sign of a baby bat anywhere to be found. Then when the cubs had
forgotten all about it in the fun of chasing crickets, she suddenly
swooped so near that they could plainly see her. What was their
amazement to find that she still carried the four little bats clinging
to her teats! They must have been heavy youngsters, too; but her wings
were powerful, being so large for such a small body, and her devotion
seemed to be equal to that of any other mammal.
That same June the Ranger and his Boy came, one day, upon a mother red
bat hanging head downward, asleep, with her little ones, with her thumbs
hooked in a low branch of a seedling yellow pine; but so still she hung,
and so like the tree trunk was her orange tint, that even in full
sunlight she might have escaped observation, had the Boy not been
uncommonly accustomed to using his eyes. Gently he reached out a hand
and lifted one of the baby bats from where it clung to its mother. It
was too sleepy to protest. Its wee face looked as grotesque as that of a
gnome the size of his thumb.
“Dad, do you suppose I could tame it?” the Boy asked the Ranger.
“It might die for need of its mother’s milk,” his father told him, “But
I once tamed a half-grown bat. They make gentle pets if you treat them
right, but if they consider it necessary to their safety, they can bite
ferociously.
“Most of our bats migrate South about September. I have heard sailors
say that they sometimes fly hundreds of miles to reach the islands of
the tropics.
“These red bats, and their cousins the big hoary bats, are clean enough;
but when I was down in Mexico I found a species that had the most
disagreeable musky odor. They used to collect literally by the hundreds
about old buildings and in church belfries and wherever they could find
a dark cranny to hide in, till they simply made it impossible for people
to come near. Those Mexican bats are the kind that live in eaves and
ruins—”
“And in Hallowe’en pictures?”
“I dare say! As they fly only in the dark, I suppose they need their
scent to help take the place of sight. They go with the Gila monsters
and rattle-snakes.”
“What good are they, anyway?” wondered the Boy.
“People used to think them just an unmitigated pest, those smelly
Mexican bats. But they do eat mosquitoes. I suppose they do their part,
down in the malarial districts, in helping to exterminate the malarial
mosquitoes. They certainly do devour incredible numbers of insects, so I
suppose they have their place in the scheme of things.
“Be that as it may, we do have a bat, the big-eared desert bat, that is
known to help the farmer, and that deserves to be protected, just as
much as the insect-eating birds. But people generally kill them on
sight. These nice clean red bats, too, help to keep the Balance of
Nature. I have never killed one in my life.”
The Boy’s eyes marvelled as he gently gave the wee bat to its sleeping
mother.
CHAPTER XV
THE SMUGGLER
The Ranger had been puzzled by strange footprints he had found on the
river bank. He had also been disturbed to learn that the lumbermen just
over the pass were getting liquor. The lumber boss complained that in
some mysterious way they were getting the forbidden stuff. There had
been several serious accidents in felling the great trees because the
men had been drinking. The Ranger suspected that there might be a
smuggler about who was bringing rum from some point alongshore up the
river, but he could find neither the man nor his cache.
This summer the Ranger had his hands full, what with the danger of
forest fires, and a dozen other things. The Boy wished he might help.
It fell to Chinook to play the instrument of destiny. Sniffing around
one day, he found a cave in the rocks above the river bank from which
issued the most enticing odor. It was like nothing he had ever whiffed
before. It smelled as if it might be good, and he meant to find it.
A few days later the Ranger’s Boy, looking for human footprints along
the river bank, suddenly stopped to peer, for there—in an opening
between the trees—was the little bear performing the most amazing
antics. The strange part of it was that the usually alert cub didn’t
even notice that the Boy was there.
He had a brown jug in his forepaws, and first he lay down flat on his
stomach and took a long drink, then, after spilling some of it on the
ground, he sat back, leaning against a stump with his legs straight out
in front, as he tipped the jug with both paws. (The Boy could scarcely
keep from laughing aloud, but he kept tight hold on himself, for he
wanted to see more.)
When the jug seemed to have been emptied, the little bear attempted to
arise and walk on his hind feet, but to the Boy who had seen similar
human antics, it was plain that Chinook was intoxicated. He reeled from
side to side, barely able to keep his balance, and then he fell flat on
his back, still clinging to the jug, and, lying there with all fours in
the air, began hoisting it about with his hind feet. He would have made
a good circus clown, thought the Boy, for now he was turning
somersaults, and now he was on his hind legs circling around and around
with a joyous dancing step. It must have made him seasick, though we
will draw the veil. But it had given the Boy an idea.
“Father!” he announced that night, “I’ll bet I know where the smuggler
keeps his stuff!” and he related what he had seen that afternoon. Sure
enough, they found a cave next day into which the rum had been smuggled,
and, lying in wait, a few days later, they caught the smuggler. But
Chinook never knew why, on his return trip to the cave of tantalizing
odors, the jugs were all smashed and their contents gone.
[Illustration: He had the brown jug in his forepaws.]
“Never mind,” he thought, chasing a pine cone. “I’ll bet I can find
another bee tree.”
CHAPTER XVI
DOUGLAS SQUIRREL HAS COMPANY
For several weeks the smell of wood smoke had come from the South. It
was that warning smoke that had kept the Ranger ready at a moment’s
notice from the fire lookouts to summon a hundred helpers from the
lumber camp to cut a fire trench, for in the drier woods of California
raged fearful forest fires.
About that time the cubs began to notice that their woods were being
visited by a number of furred and feathered folk who did not belong
there. Foxes slunk along the shadows as if aware that they were in
unknown territory. A prickly porcupine family, a mother and four
children, came lumbering, fearless and unafraid in their protecting
spines. A black and white striped skunk and her five kittens came soon
after, leaving tiny bearlike footprints, and when one of the young foxes
would have pounced on the littlest kitten, the kitten turned its back
and raised its plumy tail, and stamped its feet angrily, and the mother
fox signalled for her son to run fast, or something terrible would
happen. The skunks also were completely unafraid.
Birds flew in increasing numbers through the tree tops, a few deer came
feeding in a famished manner on the ferns and bracken, and any number of
brown little cottontails came gnawing hungrily at every bit of green
stuff they could reach without being caught. Douglas the squirrel
watched from his tree top in amazement. For it was the squirrels who
came in greatest numbers—gray squirrels and red squirrels and little
striped chipmunks. These fairly swarmed through the tree tops, while the
smoke yellowed the stifling air and the sun glowed red all day long. The
woods in which they had had their homes had burned, and while the wind
for the most part came from the sea and blew the smoke eastward, the
more experienced of the four-footed folk knew that the way to escape was
neither to go with the wind nor against it, but at right angles to the
march of the flames.
Douglas, who had come to feel that he owned the woods around Mother
Brown Bear’s den, swore and scolded and barked insults at the refugees,
but it didn’t do him a particle of good. The best he could do was to
hold his own particular spruce tree from their onslaught. The rich,
nut-filled spruce cones and the great, heavy yellow pine cones on which
he had feasted fat all summer, and all the huge stores of these good
things that he had hidden in every hollow log and cranny of the
rocks—all these riches that would have lasted him for years if left
undisturbed were being appropriated by the starving hordes whose own
stores had been burned.
If the cubs hadn’t been so fond of nuts themselves that they really
preferred them to squirrel meat, they would have had a great time that
summer, for some of the younger squirrels were not a bit cautious.
“What are all you folks coming here for, anyway?” Douglas demanded, as
an old gray squirrel came running along his favorite limb.
“For something to eat,” answered the old fellow wearily, cutting off a
spruce cone and turning it rapidly in his paws as he cut one scale after
another to lay bare the nut. “Personally, I mean to keep on till I find
a certain grove of lodgepole pines that I happen to know about.”
“Why, are they better than these?” Douglas demanded impudently.
“The nuts are no better, perhaps, but there are sure to be more of them.
I’ve traveled many a weary mile since my youth, for my family has been
driven by fire, or drouth and poor nut crops, to one grove after
another; but never yet have I known a lodgepole not to be full of nuts;
for if one year’s crop has failed, there are still the crops of past
years clinging to the branches. No, sir! I never knew a grove of
lodgepole pines where there weren’t nuts in abundance.”
“Well, then, why didn’t you move into one long ago?” Douglas was still
rude.
“Why don’t you move somewhere else yourself?” asked the old squirrel
patiently.
“Because this is _my_ tree! These are _my_ woods! This is my _home_! My
family and friends all live right around here. What a question to ask!
Why should I move? Why should I go some place else?” he barked, his tail
jerking angrily at every phrase.
“Don’t you see,” the old squirrel chittered mildly, “that _we_ love our
homes? Why, every last one of us had our own tree that no one else ever
dreamed of intruding upon, except to run through the branches when it
didn’t seem safe on the ground. Of course we never objected to anyone
running across our back yard if he had to. But no one ever dreamed of
touching our stores. Why, we knew every twig and knothole, and every
place a nut was hidden. I assure you we never would have left our homes
if we hadn’t been driven to it. But I can see your heart has never been
softened by trouble. You have had life too easy here.” But Douglas was
not listening. He had started down to fight and threaten and try to
drive a family of half-starved refugees from some stores he had thought
safely hidden along the under side of a log. Mrs. Douglas, ashamed of
her mate, stayed close to her nest, though she saw her pantries being
invaded. “I do hope Douglas won’t give them a wrong impression about our
family,” she told herself.
Just then Chinook, the little brown bear, came along. “I’ll eat you
alive!” he challenged Douglas, and started merrily after him. By the
time Douglas had thrown his pursuer off the track and returned to the
scene, his stores had been raided by dozens of immigrant squirrels.
“Now I’ll have to work hard all fall,” Douglas complained to any who
might listen, “to collect enough for winter.”
“Why not?” called the old squirrel. “It isn’t the way of the woods to
corner more than you can eat. What right had you to those nuts, when
others were starving? No one will bother your cache if you keep it down
to a reasonable size, but beyond that, these woods are for all. If
anything, it is you red squirrels who do the stealing from us gray
squirrels,”
What Douglas retorted wouldn’t be fit to print.
“My!” chirped a young gray squirrel who had been down getting a quick
lunch. He had been following his more experienced fellow refugee for
miles. “I had the awfullest time crossing the open spaces! Did you ever
see so many hawks and owls in your life?”
“That is why I always went around the long way where I could leap from
one tree to another,” said the old squirrel. “We didn’t cross half as
many open spaces as some of those young fellows who got caught.”
“How ever did you know where to go?” marvelled the young squirrel.
“Oh, I always have an eye out for a possible emergency, and every time I
go on a vacation ramble, I notice where there is good feeding, and then
I try to make a mental map of the region. You young fellows are more
agile, but you haven’t had our experience, all the same. Every summer,
when it gets to a time when everything is ripe and I can live off the
country, I go forest-cruising, and I don’t do it altogether for a good
time, either.”
“That brown squirrel with the orange underneath, he’s a handsome
fellow,” ventured the young gray squirrel.
“Douglas?” The old squirrel sniffed in disgust. “I much prefer that
fellow,” nodding to where a big Oregon chipmunk sat on a stump and gave
every passer-by a sociable “Chuck! Chuck!” He had only a few black
stripes to adorn the brown of his coat.
“Why, he’s the plainest chipmunk I ever saw,” said the young gray
squirrel. “Not half as handsome as ours.”
“All the same, I’ll wager he never has a grouch like the kind your
handsome Douglas has just been exhibiting. You certainly come to know
squirrel nature when a big calamity like this rubs off our surface
manners!”
“You certainly do, sir,” agreed the young squirrel. “Here comes Douglas
back again.”
“To jaw us, I suppose. If I weren’t so rheumatic, I’d lick him for his
impudence.”
“I’ll lick him for you,” volunteered the young squirrel, and the last
thing Chinook saw, Douglas was being chased ferociously through the tree
tops.
CHAPTER XVII
WAPITI
That fall when Snookie and Chinook went camping, they first made their
way back to Lookout Peak, for a few days of coasting and chasing
pack-rats and “snowshoe rabbits,” then they took a ridge trail and
journeyed clear over into a mountain valley where grazed a herd of elk.
These wapiti (American cousins of the European stag) were the largest
deer the cubs had ever seen, and one of them had the most ferocious
great wide antlers.
“I’d hate to get that bull after me,” said Snookie.
“Well, you can tell his head end from a long way off,” observed Chinook.
“By the antlers?”
“You can tell, when he’s too far away to see his horns.”
“How?”
“By his tail end. Don’t you see that big light-colored patch?” referring
to the rump spots they wore.
“That’s right,” reflected Snookie. “Look at them trailing up through the
woods.” For as the wind shifted and carried the herd the scent of the
two bears, the wapiti had taken alarm.
“I expect they can follow each other from a long way off,” reasoned
Snookie, “their tail ends show up so plainly.” Her mother had taught her
to look for the reason in everything.
“There’s always a reason,” her brother agreed. “Whoof! There’s Cougar!”
Far away across the meadow they could see the giant cat creeping
sinuously like a gray-brown shadow against the dark green of the spruce
woods. Cougar had craftily come up with the wind in his nostrils, and he
could smell the elk when they could not get his scent.
“He’ll never dare attack them,” thought Snookie, who had been chased and
wounded by a mule deer she had come too near at the rutting season.
“He won’t dare come near the bull,” said Chinook. “But I’ll bet he’d
like to catch a young cow.” But though the two cubs waited, interested,
till after dark, Cougar still crouched in the forest fringe. As night
had fallen, nothing but the light rump patches showed where the herd was
gathering to go to sleep. The cubs were mystified when, every now and
then, one of these light patches would completely disappear, when in the
dusk they could see no more than if the great animals had been swallowed
by the earth. Then as suddenly, there they would be again, “I know,”
Chinook reasoned it out. “It must be when they turn around facing this
way that we can’t see the rump spots.”
If they hadn’t still been a little afraid of Cougar, yearling cubs that
they were, they would have crept nearer to see what was going on over
there where, for aught they knew, the lion still crouched ready for a
spring. After awhile they gave it up. As an actual fact, Cougar too had
given it up, as the herd picked the very centre of the meadow in which
to sleep, and the antlered bull still kept watch over his harem.
That night, after the stars came out, the cubs made their way to the
head of a river they had been following, and against the quaking aspen
that grew in the moist ground, they stretched as high as they could
reach, and clawed the bark to show how tall they were. Chinook was
slightly larger than his sister, though she fought so well that now she
could always hold her own in a scrap. Soon, he decided, he wouldn’t have
her tagging him everywhere he went. She was always so much more
cautious, so much less ready to take a chance. She took life too
seriously. By another year or so he’d be staking out his own range,
holding it against all comers, and perhaps finding a mate. He certainly
was getting to be a big bear. He wasn’t even sure if he were really
afraid of Cougar any more. Still, he’d be happier if only the great cat
would go away. When he thought of his long winter sleeps, he didn’t like
the idea of having such a neighbor to come up on him when he wasn’t
looking. Cougar was so quick and agile!
Here in the boggy ground about the spring they caught a frog apiece, but
they were not really hungry, for all day they had been stuffing great
pawfuls of thimbleberries, elderberries, blackberries, dogwood seed and
even spiny wild gooseberries, to say nothing of several kinds of nuts
and roots, into their mouths. They had also had good luck with their
mousing. Their sides were getting fatter and fatter. They would be well
prepared for the winter cold.
After a brief nap, they started on to another mountainside to see what
that was like. In these clear altitudes the stars were so many more than
they had been in the moist lower slopes, and so much more brilliant,
that they had no trouble whatever in finding their way. Down through the
head of a canyon, then up again they climbed, till by dawn they were
once more high above timberline. Where broken slide-rock led to the
snowbanks of the peaks, they began hearing a curious little noise
halfway between a bark and a bleat. It was like no sound the cubs had
ever heard before, and it was the hardest thing in the world to tell
where it came from. Now the nasal “Eh! Eh!” seemed to sound from under
their very feet, and they would begin digging gleefully. In another
minute it would sound from away off to the right or the left, or at any
rate it seemed to (the ruse was a bit of ventriloquism). To the cubs it
was most mysterious.
When at last yellow dawn had streamed warmingly from peak to distant
peak, Chinook saw a small brown ball of fur the size of a half-grown
cottontail dart from the rock right before his eyes. As he had looked
off over the peaks, he must have glanced straight at the creature. But
it was hidden in the rock-slide before Chinook could get over his
surprise. In a few minutes it appeared on a rock higher up, but went
back into some tunnel before the cubs could get into action. Its ears
were too round for those of a bunny, though, and it had seemed to have
no tail at all. For it was a pika, a “little chief hare,” who makes hay
for its winter stores and lives alone on the highest peaks, buried under
feet of snow the better half of the year. It would make tender eating,
if only the cubs could catch it.
Thereafter they spent several hours digging among the rocks, but always,
just as they thought they surely had it cornered, the pika would squeak
from some place else. Were there several pikas, or was it only one? They
did not know, but when they got too hungry, they gave it up to hunt for
something surer.
CHAPTER XVIII
COUGAR GOES COASTING
On the rock-slide there had been not so much as a spear of grass to eat,
and the cubs trod hungrily back to timber line.
That day they spent chasing “snowshoe rabbits,” and the chase took them
back to the alpine meadow where they had watched the wapiti. There the
cubs took a nap beneath an upturned tree root, for now they loved to
sleep by day so that they could be out all night when there was so much
more going on in the woods about them.
A weird screech sounded from the dark depths of the spruces. It was
Cougar! The cry came again.
The great cat must have been trying hard to startle small game out of
its safe hiding, for, as the cubs drew nearer, they could hear the death
scream of a hare. All night Cougar hunted, while the cubs caught mice
and nibbled spruce nuts just to leeward of him. At times the lion crept
back to watch the wapiti, who again slept in a circle in the very centre
of the open space; but with the old bull on guard with his sharp antlers
Cougar kept his distance.
That night brought the first snow of the season whirling over the high
country. The cubs noticed that the wapiti grazed restlessly that morning
through the melting whiteness. By and by they began to gather into line,
with the old bull at their head, and started off along a highway marked
by the hoofs and paws of countless travellers. The trail led over the
Pass into a lower valley. The cubs followed curiously, and as the wapiti
got their scent the whole herd began to run.
Now Cougar, after having satisfied his appetite, had taken a cross-cut
to one of his haunts so as to keep his fur dry. It was a favorite haunt
because it directly overlooked all who came by on the trail from the
Pass. Just below, to the north, sloped a long snowbank left from the
winter. Stretched out in the noonday warmth of his overhanging rock
ledge, where the September sun had quickly melted off the snow, with
nothing but a twisted juniper to cut off his view, he snoozed with one
eye half open; and his pale brown coat matched the rock so perfectly
that it would have taken a sharp eye to see him.
Suddenly his ears pricked to a sound from the Pass, and his yellow eyes
narrowed as through the snow-covered notch appeared the broad antlers
and massive head and shoulders of the approaching bull wapiti. At the
same time the wind brought him unmistakable evidence that the whole herd
was following, and he could hear the approaching clap of hoof-beats on
the run.
Cougar’s muscles tensed as he drew his legs beneath him ready for a
spring. It was the chance he had been longing for. He would wait till
the old bull was safely past, and most of the cows were strung along the
narrow trail between the bull and himself. Then he would bring down his
meat.
The cubs, lumbering along well to the rear of the herd, which had
occasionally kicked a stone from the zigzag trail, arrived at the Pass
just in time to see what happened.
Cougar, flattened till his flat head seemed a part of the flat rock
itself, and even the alert old bull wouldn’t have noticed him, had he
looked at the overhanging ledge, waited till all the herd but one had
trailed on down the mountainside. As the last young wapiti came along,
Cougar leapt upon her back. The force of his spring knocked her down,
which was what he had intended. But one thing he had not planned for:
the new soft snow, covering the hard last winter’s yield, made his own
feet slip out from under him; and still gripping the wapiti, he slid
down, down, down the long snowbank, which as it grew steeper and steeper
finally sent him head over heels. The great cat hissed and yowled. He,
for one, was not fond of coasting. Fully thirty feet below he came to a
stop when he bumped into a tree trunk.
The last the cubs saw of Cougar was the great cat disgustedly biting the
snowballs from between his toes.
CHAPTER XIX
MOUNTAIN BEAVER
Above the moist, ferny floor of a densely shaded mountain slope of
almost tropic richness, the cubs had noticed a squirrel barking in an
alder thicket.
As they approached to find out what he was barking at, their noses began
telling them that here was a whole colony of creatures they had never
smelled before. Soon they could see that the ground was a network of
their tiny trails, together with an occasional footprint that had been
left by the bobcat family.
Not a movement was made above ground, but their sharp ears could detect
scufflings and scrapings from underneath their feet. At the end of a
fallen log Chinook found a dump of earth where a hole large enough for a
woodchuck gave off that same strange scent. Merrily he started digging.
Well, he dug and he dug and he dug! He was digging the roof from a
branching tunnel, his nose telling him at every turn which way his prey
was retreating. But still he dug and he dug. Several times he heard a
tiny growling, and a snapping of angry teeth, but for half an hour he
dug as fast as he could without once catching up with the fleeing
rodent. But that only made the little bear the more determined.
Snookie, too, was digging, and he certainly didn’t mean to let her catch
one before he did. The tunnel dwellers smelled a bit like muskrats and a
bit like bunnies, but, had they only known it, they were mountain
beaver, a species like nothing else at all, but called beavers by the
Indians because of their soft fur. They look more like woodchucks than
anything else, because naturally all this digging had developed the most
powerful shoulder muscles.
Well, that whole oozy slope was fairly honeycombed with branching
tunnels, and though the two cubs dug till they were tired, and no end
covered with mud, the creatures kept escaping through their connecting
runways. Somehow, it never occurred to the little bears to lie in wait
at their exit holes as a bobcat might have done. They were too
impatient.
Then, two feet underground, Chinook came to a great round hole almost
large enough for him to have curled up in himself, and here indeed was a
feast for the pair of them; for though the anxious parents had long
since carried all the babies out of the nursery and dragged them to
safety by the backs of their necks, opening off the nursery chamber were
several clean, mud-plastered storerooms filled with fern roots, tender
twigs and juicy bits of bark. Snookie remembered that she had seen
several trees completely girdled by gnawing teeth. This, then, was the
reason why.
After they had fed their fill, for a small sample of such hearty fare
went a long way with them, the cubs gave up the chase and climbed into a
tree where they could take a nap. When they awoke, the moon had risen.
Down on the ground beneath, where before had been no sign of any living
thing, now scampered mountain beaver by the dozen. Some of them were
sitting up squirrel-like and eating, with a root or stalk held in their
handlike paws. Others were carrying great bundles of green stuff in
their jaws and dropping it beside their doorways, with stems all laid
neatly side by side, as if to dry it out before storing it. Still others
were rapidly rebuilding their depleted tunnels. But though the cubs
promptly came down and tried to have more fun, again they had the same
baffling experience. They caught not one mountain beaver.
CHAPTER XX
THE BIG ’QUAKE
“How I wish Cougar would go somewhere else to make his home!” Chinook
kept wishing as November’s chill came on. “This looks like a hard
winter. My fur has come in lots thicker than last year, and the
squirrels have all laid in their winter stores earlier. I’ll bet you
anything, once we get to sleep, we won’t want to wake up till spring!”
“And Cougar might get hungry before we woke,” Snookie caught his
thought. “I wonder! How I wonder if he really would have the courage to
attack us, now that we’re so big?”
“He could sneak up on us while we slept, and he’d just about have us at
his mercy,” her brother pointed out. “I find I can’t possibly squeeze
into that hole I slept in last year. But if Cougar doesn’t mind bringing
down wapiti, how do we know he wouldn’t tackle yearling cub?”
For all that, Snookie and Chinook soon found themselves getting so
drowsy that they just couldn’t keep awake much longer, Cougar or no
Cougar. One feels that way when one hibernates. They had found
themselves a rock den apiece near where their mother lived, and already
the snow had covered her doorway, and they wouldn’t have known she was
there but for the steaming breath that melted a yellowed hole in the
white.
“Confound that Cougar!” growled Chinook. “Why doesn’t something dreadful
happen to him?”
He was startled out of his first delicious snooze, a few weeks later, by
feeling the rocks tremble. A low sound like distant thunder, yet that
was not thunder, sounded, seemingly from deep underground.
“It’s another earthquake,” he told himself, as a second trembling set
the smaller rocks to sliding down the gulch. Instantly some advice his
mother had once given him brought him wide awake with a snap. The rock
den was not safe! He must make for the open!
Snookie too remembered, and the two cubs raced up the gulch to an open
space where the great trees were still quivering. “Is it all over?”
whimpered Snookie, for she still felt that dizzying sidewise motion
beneath her feet.
It was not all over, for this was a big ’quake such as only comes in
years. A shake heavier than before sent the rock-slide of their gulch
shooting down among the fallen logs. Larger rock-slides thundered down
the mountainsides. Mother Brown Bear and the little sister and brothers
of that summer’s raising went racing from their dens, the youngsters too
scared to know which way to turn, for it was their first earthquake. One
took to a tall tree, and clung there while it swayed. One started down
along the rock-slide, and when, later, they found him, he lay there half
buried, cut and bleeding, and glad to pull through alive.
One of the new cubs ran out on the fallen logs, and was half buried
beneath chips and branches as the whole structure shifted, then she
struggled free and wisely climbed a sapling. Mother Brown Bear herself
ran out into the middle of another open space.
It all took place in a good deal less time than it takes to tell it.
Then came a jerk that fairly took Chinook’s feet from under him, and
with a louder subterranean growling the Big ’Quake came. Dead trees came
crashing down, huge boulders pounded down the mountainsides and shook
the ground anew, and a slab of canyon wall was jolted loose along a
fault line and went splashing into the roiling river. Then came hail in
great, driving sheets, and it was over. The cubs ducked to shelter as
the icy pellets struck about their ears. There was an overhanging rock
ledge that had withstood the wild confusion.
When they peeked to see what had happened, they found a great crack, as
deep as a sapling pine and so wide they wouldn’t have ventured to leap
across, where before had been level earth. It was an altered landscape
in which they found themselves.
Then a comic sight struck their eyes. It was Cougar, whose den must have
been shaken to pieces in all this tumult. The great cat was racing along
with his tail tucked trembling between his legs, and his ears laid flat
against the hail, while, to judge from the way his body hugged the
earth, he was too terrified to stand. His nose was pointed down canyon
towards the Coast, and at the rate he was speeding, Chinook thought it
would be safe to count on his never coming back. As his own fright
dissolved at the feel of the earth once more firm beneath his feet,
Chinook’s little black eyes began to twinkle. His wish had come true.
THE END
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